Rosie Stockton
The care I felt at Civitella Ranieri stunned me. I felt nurtured both by the staff and Fellow artists, and this allowed my feeling and thinking and writing to unfold in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. Perhaps the luckiest thing about Civitella was the time if afforded me for daydreaming amidst the backdrop of a complex and rich history in and around Umbertide. I came to Civitella Ranieri at the tale end of a book project, unsure where my writing would lead me, and the amount of thinking and writing I was able to accomplish during my time here will be the foundation of my next book, and various other writing projects.
SERENITY POST
day, body, breathing
if i follow this seeing
what city summits can i conceive of & how deep in the dirt can i
rest my question, unwind my tide break the law till it’s broken
and, together, fossilize
the known measures
hushed like nostalgic traces
of rope marks imprinted
around your wrists
machine song, my forensic shame
this unconditional love in escrow
where a partial third party mediates my view of glistening dirt and faded starlight.
i’m scared of the overexposed times
when i disappear you behind yourself
& with sunspotted vision
i’m left with only myself to love.
adoration, reinvented time
some days i whisper my name, quietly, to myself. a rotund hypochorism, blossom’d and swooping in to usher in a new day-and-age,
where the horizon’s my trade &
i turn back toward earth
tilting forward my graced pelvis​—
my arched foot, bent around a lucite sun.
ecstatic form, risk, surge
some days i cross titrate my self with clouds
& tidal chores: the earwigs scatter in dismay, the dust relocates, displacing
the invasive bougainvillea. little reminders, like thunder, cake the oat encrusted pan​— shy, of noise, & tremendous.
kill fuck marry
the lady bugged screen, the leaking window, the air of sky. together, the beach crowd calculates the distant showers.
a superstitious couple blames the traffic.
mattresses pile up on curbs, creaking.
a detoxed pomegranate branch bends under its blossoms. far off, a rent-a-storm rusts the overpasses. spectacular & paranoid, the perennial flowers mask up,
multiplying like plastic, floating on camouflaged fences.
